4 Major Candidates Vie for New York Public Advocate Job

By VIVIAN YEE

September 9, 2013

Though New York City’s current public advocate, Bill de Blasio, has fought his way to front-runner status in the race for mayor, the four major candidates battling to succeed him have struggled even to be sure voters know who they are — and what the job is. The least known of the three citywide offices, after mayor and comptroller, the public advocate is an ombudsmanlike post created in 1993 to give voice to residents’ complaints and concerns.

It has a negligible budget and little concrete power, but, as Mr. de Blasio’s surge shows, politicians can use the office as a launching pad to pursue greater things; one of Mr. de Blasio’s predecessors, Mark Green, captured the Democratic nomination for mayor in 2001. The major candidates now are all Democrats, and the Republican primary ballot for Tuesday is devoid of public advocate candidates, so whoever wins the Democratic primary — or a runoff later — is all but guaranteed to take office.

Biggest problem facing New York: A broken public school system; Ms. Guerriero says that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s experiment with mayoral control over schools has failed, and that too much power has been taken away from parents and teachers

Letitia James

Chester Higgins Jr. / The New York Times

Biggest idea for the office: Bring in 50 graduate students to work as unpaid research fellows in a “public advocate think tank,” drafting policy solutions to the city’s problems

LETITIA JAMES, 54

Job: City councilwoman from Brooklyn

Neighborhood: Clinton Hill

Best-known endorser: Working Families Party

Biggest problem facing New York: The lack of affordable housing, and ever-increasing rents that force New Yorkers out of their neighborhoods

Reshma M. Saujani

Nicole Bengiveno / The New York Times

Biggest idea for the office: Engage public school parents, who Ms. James says have been shut out of the debate over the city’s education policy, through a program to educate them about school policy and to help take their concerns to the city’s Education Department

RESHMA M. SAUJANI, 37

Job: Founder of Girls Who Code, a nonprofit group that trains young women from underserved communities in computer science skills to prepare them for jobs in the technology industry

Biggest problem facing New York: The growing number of residents struggling to find jobs and enter the middle class

Biggest idea for the office: Establish a deputy public advocate for women and a women’s commission, which would advocate for laws and policies that “actually improve the lives of women and girls”

DANIEL L. SQUADRON, 33

Job: State senator representing parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan

Neighborhood: Carroll Gardens

Best-known endorser: United States Senator Charles E. Schumer

Biggest problem facing New York: Affordability and growing inequality, which Mr. Squadron says is putting the city at risk of losing the diversity and opportunity “that makes New York so great”

Biggest idea for the office: Create a special bureau to focus on the needs of vulnerable communities that currently lack a voice in government, like children in foster care, the homeless and immigrant laborers